His dark house, and his dark figure corresponded with each other. The apartments, choaked up with lumber, scarcely admitted his body, though of the skeleton order. Perhaps leanness is an appendage to the science, for I never knew a corpulent conjurer.
His diet, regular, plain, and slender, shewed at how little expence life may be sustained.
His library consisted of several thousand volumes, not one of which, I believe, he ever read: having written, in characters unknown to all but himself, his name, price, and date, in the title-page, he laid them by for ever. The highest pitch of his erudition was the annual almanack.
He never wished to approach a woman, or be approached by one. Should the rest of men, for half a century, pay no more attention to the fair, some angelic hand might stick up a note, like the artic circle over one of our continents, this world to be let.
If he did not cultivate the human species, the spiders, more numerous than his books, enjoyed an uninterrupted reign of quiet. The silence of the place was not broken: the broom, the book, the dust, or the web, was not disturbed. Mercury and his shirt, changed their revolutions together; and Saturn changed his, with his coat.
He died, in 1756, as conjurers usually die, unlamented.
MILITARY ASSOCIATION.
The use of arms is necessary to every man who has something to lose, or something to gain. No property will protect itself. The English have liberty and property to lose, but nothing to win. As every man is born free, the West-Indian slaves have liberty to gain, but nothing to lose. If a rascally African prince attempts to sell his people, he ought to be first sold himself; and the buyer, who acts so daringly opposite to the Christian precept, is yet more blameable. He ought to have the first whip, often mended, worn out upon his own back.
It may seem unnecessary to tell the world, what they already know; recent transactions come under this description; but they are not known to the stranger, nor to posterity.